Capitals of Oceania

Canberra

Canberra is the purpose-built capital of Australia and lies inland. It was founded as a compromise between the rival cities of Sydney and Melbourne.

💡 Did you know? Canberra was built specifically to be the capital because Sydney and Melbourne could not agree.

Suva

Suva is the capital of Fiji and lies on the largest island of the Pacific nation. It is an important trade and port centre of the region.

💡 Did you know? Fiji consists of over 300 islands, many of them uninhabited.

South Tarawa

South Tarawa is the capital of Kiribati and consists of a chain of low coral islands in the Pacific. The country is threatened by rising sea levels.

💡 Did you know? Kiribati lies only a few metres above the sea and is among the countries most threatened by climate change.

Majuro

Majuro is the capital of the Marshall Islands, an atoll nation in the Pacific. The city stretches as a narrow ribbon along an atoll ring.

💡 Did you know? Majuro lies on a ring-shaped coral atoll, only a few hundred metres wide in places.

Palikir

Palikir is the capital of the Federated States of Micronesia in the western Pacific. The island nation consists of over 600 scattered islands.

💡 Did you know? The Federated States of Micronesia stretch across a vast part of the Pacific, though their land area is tiny.

Yaren

Yaren is the seat of government of Nauru, the third-smallest country in the world. Nauru is a single coral-island country in the Pacific with no official capital.

💡 Did you know? Nauru is so small that it has no official capital at all: Yaren is only the seat of government.

Wellington

Wellington is the capital of New Zealand and lies at the southern tip of the North Island. It is the southernmost capital of a sovereign state in the world.

💡 Did you know? Because of the strong winds in the strait, Wellington is known as 'Windy Wellington'.

Ngerulmud

Ngerulmud is the capital of Palau, a tiny island nation in the western Pacific. It is one of the smallest capitals in the world.

💡 Did you know? Ngerulmud is often cited as the least populous capital in the world: barely more than the government building.

Port Moresby

Port Moresby is the capital of Papua New Guinea and lies on the south coast of the island of New Guinea. The country is one of the most culturally diverse on Earth.

💡 Did you know? Over 800 different languages are spoken in Papua New Guinea: more than anywhere else.

Honiara

Honiara is the capital of the Solomon Islands and lies on the island of Guadalcanal in the Pacific. The island was the scene of heavy fighting in the Second World War.

💡 Did you know? Guadalcanal, where Honiara lies, was the scene of a decisive Pacific battle in the Second World War.

Apia

Apia is the capital of Samoa and lies on the north coast of the main island. It is the only sizeable town of the Pacific nation.

💡 Did you know? Samoa lies so close to the date line that in 2011 it skipped a whole calendar day to switch its time zone.

Nukuʻalofa

Nukuʻalofa is the capital of the Kingdom of Tonga in the South Pacific. Tonga is the last remaining island kingdom of the region.

💡 Did you know? Tonga is the only country in the Pacific never colonised by a European power, although it was a British protectorate from 1900 to 1970.

Funafuti

Funafuti is the capital of Tuvalu, one of the smallest countries in the world, in the Pacific. The atoll nation rises only a few metres out of the sea.

💡 Did you know? Tuvalu is so low and small that rising sea levels threaten to make it disappear entirely.

Port Vila

Port Vila is the capital of Vanuatu, an island nation of around 80 volcanic islands in the South Pacific. It is the country's economic centre.

💡 Did you know? Vanuatu is home to Mount Yasur, one of the most accessible active volcanoes in the world.